LOCAL HEROES: A weekly column on musicians and happenings in the Chicago area music scene.

Russian Circles turn up the volume, tune out the words

May 26, 2006|By Andy Downing

Things tend to happen slowly for Russian Circles. The band approaches songwriting the way most people approach their day-to-day existence; its tunes, which take anywhere from two weeks to five months to complete, develop a life cycle of their own.

"[Writing] is a long and painstaking process," says bassist Colin DeKuiper, who describes a three-part journey.

"First when you're starting out in the writing, it's really exciting because that's when it's open and free. Then you get to the middle editing part where you're weaning out the bad from the good, and it's long and tiring. Then you finally get to that last stage where you're seeing it all come together, which is where all the satisfaction comes in."

The results are captured on the instrumental trio's debut album, "Enter" (Flameshovel). The songs build from ambient washes to intense peaks with Mike Sullivan's guitar evoking a Category 5 hurricane as drummer Dave Turncrantz pounds at his kit like a brute in a back-alley fight.

Like other local "instru-metal" acts such as Del Rey and Pelican, the Circles seem to have more in common with stormy weather phenomena than its relatively simple bass-guitar-drums construct would suggest. According to DeKuiper, part of that power stems from the band's instrumental origins.

"One thing about being in an instrumental band is that you can really push it to the limits as far as volume goes because you don't have to leave room for vocals," says DeKuiper. "It's not about just being an extremely loud band. It's about having enough presence where people turn their heads like, `What's going on here?' It's almost physical music when you see it live."

"These guys were playing as if they were at the height of their touring," says Norman. "On top of that, the music was really energetic and diverse and could go from these manic moments to these serene moments and very spatial sort of moods."

Even in its earliest live shows the band displayed a veteran savvy, due in large part to its intense practice schedule. Norman points out that he doesn't know any Chicago band that rehearses more--and DeKuiper acknowledges that the band practiced intensely for months before playing its first live show.

The trio first got together in late 2004 after the breakup of Dakota/Dakota, a math-rock band in which DeKuiper and Sullivan played (the two met while attending DePaul University; they graduated in 2003). Turncrantz joined the fold after leaving the band Riddle of Steel, moving to Chicago in 2004 to put some distance between himself and St. Louis.

Initially, the Circles had no intention of being an instrumental band and only began writing as such because the three were eager to get to work.

"I think initially we really did think about having a singer, but we wrote the first song on the record ["Carpe"] and then we all sort of talked about it as far as what we thought could happen, and if there was room for vocals on top of it," says DeKuiper. "But we decided it was pretty full so we went ahead and wrote another song. After writing three songs, we just decided to record and see if we could get away with it.